This journal records the actual detail of how I became a master of fine art photography following 10,000 hours of deliberate practice
Hours 9,989 to 10,064
31st August 2025
Hours 10,062 to 10,064
(1h) working on my talk for the Amersham Photographic Society
(2h) creating composites from the images shot recently in Poland and at the studio day:
- “The Eyes Have it”, right
- “Coffee, Tea or Me”, below
30th August 2025
Hour 10,061
(½h) updating this journal
(½h) finishing and publishing the “Other than Photography – 2025” page
29th August 2025
Hours 10,057 to 10,060
(1h) stewarding at the Amersham Photographic Society’s annual exhibition, discussing my and other photographs with attendees and other members
(2h) at the Paz Errázuriz: “Dare to Look” exhibition at the MK Gallery in Milton Keynes, with a few members of the Amersham Photographic Society to discuss the harrowing nature of the images and comparing with the images of Nan Goldin and Chris Killip, all of whom empathetically document people on the margin of society
Left, “Blindness I”
(½h) updating this journal
(½h) processing some images of Lublin building fronts
28th August 2025
Hours 10,055 to 10,1056
(½h) Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco’s YouTube: “Tamara de Lempicka: The making of an Art Deco icon” which is by the same people, the curator of the exhibition and Lempicka’s granddaughter, who featured in the conversational YouTube watched on the 23rd
(1h) creating “Jarosław Koziara 2025 Death is not the End?”, right, the artist’s installation in Lublin, photographed last weekend (very sorry that I didn’t get to go inside) + some further fractured images
Jarosław Koziara, who is famous for installations and theatrical set designs, and increasingly land art
(½h) updating this journal
27th August 2025
Hour 10,054
(½h) researching the Chilean photographer Paz Errázuriz, whose “Dare to Look” exhibition I have booked to see at the MK Gallery on Friday, including the France 24 YouTube: “Paz Errázuriz: The female photographer who defied the Pinochet regime”
(½h) updating this journal
26th August 2025
Hours 10,050 to 10,053
(1h) processing images of Lublin, including “Fractured Plac Zamkowy”, above
(½h) Art History School YouTube: “Glamour, Power, and Paint: The Daring Life of Artist Tamara de Lempicka“
(1h) updating this journal
(1½h) finishing and publishing the post “Other Top 10s at 10,000 Hours“
25th August 2025
Hours 10,047 to 10,049
(2h) creating fractured composites from Lublin such as the town sign above
(1h) selecting images for use in next season’s external competitions from the best of those entered into last season’s internal competitions at the Stoke Poges Photographic Club
24th August 2025
Hours 10,045 to 10,046
(2h) shooting in Lublin:
- base images for fractured composites, such as “Fractured High Wire”, right, and “Lublin Castle Fractured Courtyard”, above
- mini sculptures, such as, “Felicja”
- building fronts, possibly for use in future composites
23th August 2025
Hours 10,043 to 10,044
(1½h) researchingTamara de Lempicka including the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco’s YouTube: “A conversation on Tamara de Lempicka“. Famous collectors include:
- Barbara Streisand
- Anjelica Huston – who narrated the partially animated film “The True Story of Tamara de Lempicka & The Art of Survival”
- Madona
- Andy Warhol
(½h) updating this journal
Left, photo of photograph of Lempicka towards the end of her life in Mexico , displayed at exhibition in Lublin Castle
22nd August 2025
Hours 10,040 to 10,042
(1h) shooting, particularly structured multiple exposure urban landscapes
(1h) editing and processing the day’s images
(1h) Museum of art at Lublin Castle including the permanent exhibition to Tamara de Lempicka who I am very embarrassed not to have known more about as she is probably the most iconic artist of the Art Deco period, defining the “Roaring ’20s”
Right, “Self Portrait in Green Bugatti”
“Lithuanian Square, Lublin”
21st August 2025
Hour 10,039 – mainly spent travelling to Poland
(½h) researching art galleries and defining what I mean by “creating images that ask questions of the viewer” which is a phrase used by ChatGPT, that I liked, when describing my work
(½h) updating this journal
20th August 2025
Hours 10,036 to 10,1038
(1h) updating my “About Me” page – collaborative effort with Chat GPT
(1h) Amersham coffee club discussing some fabulous low-key mono portraits by Bernard Wallace and some of my Canadian semi-abstracts and my Jasper woodland post-wildfire images in contrast to those by Theresa Bradley published in the RPS’s Digit magazine (105), my Jasper prints prefered by Yin Wong, above (click to see the complete set)
(1h) reprocessing “Bow Lake Rock and Blue Stripe”, right, to lighten and add detail to the rock, emphasize the blue stripe and slightly darken the sky
A different colour balance has been applied to the part of the picture above the blue stripe to neutralise an otherwise magenta tint
19th August 2025
Hour 10,035
(1h) pressing the publish button on the “10,000 Hours Completed” post after a final review – almost certainly my most important blog todate, and updating all the links in the site
18th August 2025
Hours 10,029 to 10,034
(6h) finishing the “10,000 Hours Completed” post
17th August 2025
Hour 10,028
(1h) rewriting the methodology section of the “10,000 Hours Completed” post
16th August 2025
Hours 10,024 to 10,027
(½h) Mark Galer YouTube: “Sony Menues A to Z: Flash Settings”, useful tips:
- Flash Mode = “Slow Sync”, fires the flash at the start of the exposure and lets the ambient light expose there after; useful for the turning head shot I was trying to achieve. This can be accessed from the FN menu as set up on my a1, see “Setting up the Sony a1“
- for studio work with remote flashes scenes often look dark in the viewfinder before they are illuminated with a flash. To overcome this, Shooting Display/ Live View Display Set./Setting Effect = Off
(1½h) shooting the image right after over 100 failed attempts to get a version where the head looks to have moved
(2h) processing “Self Portrait in Front of Artwork”, left, frame on picture “borrowed” from a exhibit at the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition
15th August 2025
Hour 10,023
(½h) updating this journal
(½h) processing the images shot at the Memorial Gardens yesterday
14th August 2025
Hours 10,021 to 10,022
(½h) shooting at the Stoke Poges Memorial Gardens in advance of a meeting with Franzi Cheesman, the head gardener, to discuss the creation of the Village Calendar, done this year in collaboration with the Gardens
(1½h) restructuring the “10,000 Hours Completed” post
13th August 2025
Hours 10,019 to 10,020
(1h) Amersham coffee club discussing the Royal Academy’s Summer exhibition; an image I actually missed was a photopolymer gravure by Rachel Louise Brown “Reproduction. Self Portrait in Homage to Magritte”
(1h) updating this journal and Instagram feed
12th August 2025
Hours 10,016 to 10,018
(1h) creating new version of the “Looking Over the Sofa” image using techniques learnt whilst creating “The Voice of Space with Vertical Stripe” a year ago (18th February 2024), specifically the Mixer Brush effect
(1h) great Envato Tuts+ YouTube: “Photo Manipulation Basics”
- Extract Objects:
- After auto select, add mask, go to mask properties by double clicking the mas and smooth the mask with the following approximate settings:
- feather – 2px
- contrast 50-75%ish
- shift edge c. -13%
- The combination of Smart Objects and BlendIf works wonders on objects that have some, even very slight, transparency
- Colour shadows (from the unselected area of the extracted object) by clicking the “Colorize” box in a Hue/ Saturation adjustment layer
- After auto select, add mask, go to mask properties by double clicking the mas and smooth the mask with the following approximate settings:
- Create Your Composition:
- Use the Warp Transform tool to easily reshape components
(1h) creating a first version of “Giant of the Sea” below
11th August 2025
Hour 10,015
(1h) final retouching and loading the images of Fi, Luke and the dogs onto Facebook, comparing these with the images shot 2½ years earlier shows some level of improvement, although the dogs then were younger and therefore more photogenic
10th August 2025
Hours 10,013 to 10,014
(1h) researching Anselm Kiefer in advance of a potential visit to his exhibition at the Royal Academy, including the following YouTubes:
- Art Gallery Explorer: “What Happened when Anselm Kiefer met Vincent Van Gogh at The Royal Academy?“
- Columbia Global Paris Center:”Anselm Kiefer: Architecture and space in his work” – where it is suggested that Kiefer is the most important living artist
ArtFacts lists Gerhard Richter as the most successful living artist, and the third (behind Andy Warhol and Pablo Picasso). Their metrics are based on
Anselm Kiefer is #32 in the ArtFacts list
(½h) shooting Archie, Enzo, Fi & Luke (first being 2 dogs)
(½h) editing and processing the above images
9th August 2025
Hours 10,011 to 10,012
(2h) editing and processing images for the series: “Jasper, One Year After the Fire” + preparing a number of prints for discussion at the Coffee Club on Wednesday
8th August 2025
Hours 10,008 to 10,010
(1h) processing images from yesterday’s visit to the Summer Academy, creating a Flickr album and updating the journal entry [ironically this is as long as I spent in the exhibition itself]
(1h) social media, including posting on Facebook for the first time in two and a half years
(1h) experimenting with painting on top of a portrait
7th August 2025
Hours 10,005 to 10,007
(1h) creating the time data charts for the “10,000 Hours Completed” post
(1h) at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2025
Click on the image left to see the exhibits that I thought were most inspirational
(½h) adding the time data charts to the “10,000 Hours Completed” post
(½h) preparing images for exporting to Instagram
6th August 2025
Hours 10,002 to 10,004
(1h) collecting time data for this project – where I realised that I had made a mistake in last month’s journal entry, missing out 3 hours of work. So my 10,000 hour milestone was actually achieved yesterday
(1h) Amersham Coffee club, discussing the work of a few of the group’s members. Most notably, Mark Seymour gave me a copy of the Zine he produced as the result of his winning a travel photography competition
(½h) YouTubes trying to get the effect, in Photoshop, required to create a Douglass Coupland style portrait with paint dripping from the eyes of the subject:
- Bredan Williams: “How To Create The Paint Drip Effect In Photoshop – Step By Step Tutorial“
- Photoshop Essentials: “Using the Oil Paint Filter in Photoshop“
- neither really what I want/ need
(½h) updating this journal
5th August 2025
Hours 10,000 to 10,001
(1½h) creating a new version of yesterday’s “Shadow Through the Door” image, requires a lot of work recreating the room behind the hall
(½h) Instagram of my latest Magritte images
4th August 2025
Hours 9,997 to 9,999
(1h) creating revised versions of the Campbell River Seascapes, above (original, top; split toned version below)
(2h) creating the draft version of the “Shadow Through the Door” image right
The subject, shadow and gap through the wall, needs to be bigger in the frame
3rd August 2025
Hours 9,993 to 9,996
(1h) creating a Flickr folder, above, for the images from the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria and links into this journal
(1h) creating the “Campbell River Split Tone Seascape”, below, and editing other of the images from the whale watching trip on the 14th July and “Seal on the Campbell River”, bottom
(½h) shooting images of my study and hall beyond with the door both open and closed and the area behind the wall, with the goal of combining these into a Magritte style image where one can see through the shadow of a couple, with shrouded heads, kissing
(1½) first attempt at combining the above images
2nd August 2025
Hour 9,992
(1h) editing and processing the images from the 12th July: Harrison Hot Springs in the Morning and the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria in the evening
1st August 2025
Hours 9,989 to 9,991
(1h) updating this journal including the new month admin
(1h) finishing the selection of images from 10th July, a particularly productive day during my recent Canada trip, and exporting to lightroom
(1h) editing the images from the 11th July, including “Visiting Elk”, right
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